Andrew Gorospe has been at 1 events

We're excited to announce we'll be hosting a Hangout with some of the great innovators of our time,+Elon Musk and +Richard Branson, in a conversation moderated by Googler +Yonca Brunini. They'll discuss entrepreneurship, space travel, and advice for entrepreneurs around the world. They'll take questions from entrepreneurs at tech hubs like the +Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship South Africa, +Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship - Caribbean, and +Virgin Money. We're excited to hear from these two entrepreneurs who embody 10x thinking, and to be inspired by their vision for the future. Tune in on Thursday, August 8th!
9am California time
11am Jamaica time
5pm UK time
6pm South Africa time

So we have a huge potential to create increased productivity in the home and release us from the daily drudgery to increase productivity, increase the global economic output, but it's really when you combine AI & Robotics together that you have magic happening.-+peter h. diamandis ﻿

So we have a huge potential to create increased productivity in the home and release us from the daily drudgery to increase productivity, increase the global economic output, but it's really when you combine AI & Robotics together that you have magic happening.-+peter h. diamandis ﻿___

Will Work For Free -- program on technological unemployment in the UK. Unlike Martin Ford who simply says "all industries will be affected", Sam Vallely goes through them one by one, starting with High Street retail. Retail is the largest employment sector, but is going away, getting replaced by websites and smartphone apps, leaving a small number of specialist stores. For entertainment products, like DVDs, traditional supermarkets are expanding into entertainment products, and pawn shops are reselling used entertainment products, but the real threats are Amazon.com, digital downloading, and piracy. The failure of these stores is a good thing because of less pollution from DVD cases that fill landfills or are incinerated, producing toxic chemicals. For electronics, online reviews and actually less biased that in-store salespeople. What about clothes? Don't people have to try on clothing before they buy? When Internaçionale launched their website in 2012, the website took in more revenue than all the physical stores combined. Clothing doesn't seem to have an intrinsic immunity to online alternatives. There's self-checkout and vending machines, and new vending machines with i-sample, an optical sensor system that can determine gender and age. Only things like tattooing and hairdressing appear to be immune. Warehouse jobs are being replaced by Kiva robots.

In manufacturing, robots are becoming more adaptive, less pre-programmed and brittle, and more flexible, able to produce new products with less re-programming. Baxter works for about £3/hour. Smartphone apps replace a vast array of paper and electronic products. Entertainment appliances are being replaced by smart TVs that play content off the internet, making the appliances exist in virtual form only. 3D printing in the future will allow people to download and print many products.

In the agriculture industry, what jobs are left are being replaced by robotic cow milking, automation of crop cultivation, vertical farming and hydroponics.

Automation is starting to enter the health care industry. Smartphone apps can send your heart rate directly to your cardiologist. A 15-year-old from Maryland discovers a way of detecting cancer that looks like it is 99% accurate, 168x faster, 26,000x cheaper than existing methods. Hospitals are getting robot couriers and telepresence robots.

In the food industry, McDonald's is rolling out kiosks in Europe, and in the US, McDonalds has started replacing drive-thrus with voice recognition systems. Momentum Machines has invented a burger-making machine that can make burgers to order, and FuA-Men Noodles is working on machines to replace chefs completely at restaurants like Panda Express.

Hotels are starting to use automatic check-in. Yotel in New York has motorized beds, and "Yobot" motorized luggage system, that sends your luggage directly to the airport through tunnels. Autonomous vacuum cleaners and window washers exist. But the biggest threat to the hotel industry might be sites like couchsurfing that allow people to bypass hotels entirely. (He doesn't mention Airbnb.)

Sandvik Automine is a system of automated trucks for the mining industry. They have improved drilling accuracy and increased mining production while eliminating jobs. Sandvik says they are confident mining can be 100% automated. Rio Tinto is using huge fully automated Komatsu trucks. Gemesis have made huge progress in producing artificial gem-quality diamonds. Sam Vallely speculates that artificial gold and silver could be made, too, but he's wrong about that -- unlike diamonds, gold and silver are elements (he needs to brush up on his knowledge of chemistry).

The construction industry is a huge source of employment. ISI has developed a contour crafting computer-controlled home construction process where an entire house can be constructed in a 3D printing process.

The education industry can be automated. The "hole in the wall" project in a slum in New Delhi showed kids can be taught by computer very easily without any formal training or adult supervision. Khan Academy consolidates knowledge in instructional videos in all the main academic subjects. University-level classes are offered by Coursera, which offers certificates, which have been used to gain employment.

The arts & entertainment industry will still exist because they don't rely on financial incentives (RSA talk by Dan Pink). For media distribution, Youtube could work better than traditional TV & cable. The film industry is the most profitable, and expensive, part of the entertainment industry, but CGI is getting closer and closer to reflecting reality. Video games are entirely CGI and have much lower budgets than films. Even Blender, the open source 3D modeling program, can produce impressive results.

Legal discovery work is being replaced by e-discovery software. Accounting work is being replaced by online accounting systems, and online transactions don't even need to be manually entered. Translation and interpretation services are being replaced by software like Lingo, Architectural work will be done in CAD systems and 3D printed.

Engineering, computer system design, photography, and scientific research, all fall under the umbrella of "creativity" and will exist regardless of paid employment. Advertising is under threat from online advertising like Youtube. Consulting services can be replaced by advanced voice recognition software.

What about administrative & support services? Computers can automate the typical information processing, filtering, and categorizing that administrative people do, just like how Facebook can pre-fill registration forms. Government information hubs could automate many tasks across industries.

For the finance & insurance industry, he talks about how the fractional reserve banking system is built on an assumption of continuous growth.

Robots still require energy. He thinks the world will switch to solar, rather than nuclear. Solar roads could provide enough energy for the US. He also looks at wind and geothermal energy.

What about machine maintenance? Machines need maintenance largely because of planned obsolescence. Simple things like nanoparticle coatings could prevent water and oils from getting on machine parts. So he doesn't think there need to be many jobs in machine maintenance in the future.

The solution to technological unemployment, he proposes, is a "sustainable economy", though he doesn't elaborate on how that would work. There could be, but doesn't have to be, a period of poverty and destitution, before we transition.﻿___The greatest documentary on automation I have seen yet.

Average NFL football game shows 11 minutes of play and 100 commercials.

Average National Football League games on TV last 3 hours and 12 minutes, but only 11 minutes of those games involve actual play. Also: The average play lasts four seconds.

In several ways, American football is more like Japanese sumo wrestling than it is like soccer or rugby.

Like American football, a sumo wrestling match involves enormous preparation and strategizing (and also enormous men) but lasts an average of 10 seconds for the entire match. In both football and sumo, victory or defeat often boils down to who's giant players are better at pushing and shoving the other players.

Ironically, an average of 17 minutes of NFL replays are shown -- more time than spent on actual play.

The stop-and-go nature of NFL football makes it a dream sport for advertisers, who av... more »

Average NFL football game shows 11 minutes of play and 100 commercials.

Average National Football League games on TV last 3 hours and 12 minutes, but only 11 minutes of those games involve actual play. Also: The average play lasts four seconds.

In several ways, American football is more like Japanese sumo wrestling than it is like soccer or rugby.

Like American football, a sumo wrestling match involves enormous preparation and strategizing (and also enormous men) but lasts an average of 10 seconds for the entire match. In both football and sumo, victory or defeat often boils down to who's giant players are better at pushing and shoving the other players.

Ironically, an average of 17 minutes of NFL replays are shown -- more time than spent on actual play.

The stop-and-go nature of NFL football makes it a dream sport for advertisers, who average 100 commercials per game.

What goes up must come down – it’s an ancient wisdom and who would know better than the folks in mountainous Switzerland. Several referendums are seeking to level the playing field between the 1% and all the rest. A brief review.

Back in March 2013 “Swiss voters approved some of the world’s toughest limits on executives’ pay in a referendum, a move critics say could make Switzerland less attractive to multinational corporations. [...] The proposal gives shareholders an annual ballot on managers’ pay. It eliminates sign-on bonuses, as well as severance packages and extra incentives for completing merger transactions. The initiative also includes rules punishing executives who violate the terms with as long as three years in jail.“ Bloomberg

Now “Young activists in Switzerland have plutocrats hyperventilating ... more »

Shout it from the Mountain Tops – Swiss Fight for Equality

What goes up must come down – it’s an ancient wisdom and who would know better than the folks in mountainous Switzerland. Several referendums are seeking to level the playing field between the 1% and all the rest. A brief review.

Back in March 2013 “Swiss voters approved some of the world’s toughest limits on executives’ pay in a referendum, a move critics say could make Switzerland less attractive to multinational corporations. [...] The proposal gives shareholders an annual ballot on managers’ pay. It eliminates sign-on bonuses, as well as severance packages and extra incentives for completing merger transactions. The initiative also includes rules punishing executives who violate the terms with as long as three years in jail.“ Bloomberg

Now “Young activists in Switzerland have plutocrats hyperventilating — and spending a fortune to beat back a ballot initiative that would establish a legal limit on the pay gap between top execs and their workers. The vote will come this Sunday, November 24, on a ballot initiative that bans any Swiss corporate executive compensation that runs over 12 times worker pay. in effect, under this “1:12 Initiative for Fair Pay,” no Swiss company would be able to pay its top executives more in a month than the company’s lowest-paid workers make in a year.

Swiss corporations currently compensate their top execs more generously than any other nation in continental Europe. At pharmaceutical giant Roche, CEO pay runs 236 times the firm’s lowest wage. At Nestle, the divide spreads 188 times.”Sam Pizzigati – Too Much online

In a next step, “a grassroots citizens’ committee collected the 120,000 plus signatures needed for a referendum about a guaranteed livable income for all Swiss adults. A Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI) is a social assistance payment to all the working poor and unemployed people, so that they may reach the poverty line and be able to afford their basic needs, and possibly a little more depending on the ideologies behind it. The number being proposed is 2,500 Swiss Francs per month..

The idea was based on several different theories; however, many supporters of GLI look to Henry Ford’s situation in 1914. Ford decided that he would double the wage for his assembly-line workers from $2.50 a day to $5.00. This had a tremendous effect for his business. Not only were his workers happier and more likely to stick around, they also had more money to purchase Ford’s vehicles. As Ford said himself, “It is not the employer who pays the wages. Employers only handle the money. It is the customer who pays the wages.” Tyson Kelsall – Over the Edge

A guaranteed income is not a new idea and always sparks a controversial debate about its feasibility. What most people don’t know, is that it’s been tried in the past.

“For a four-year period in the ’70s, the poorest families in Dauphin, Manitoba, were granted a guaranteed minimum income by the federal and provincial governments. Thirty-five years later all that remains of the experiment are 2,000 boxes of documents that have gathered dust in the Canadian archives building in Winnipeg.

Until now [2009] little has been known about what unfolded over those four years in the small rural town, since the government locked away the data that had been collected and prevented it from being analyzed. But after a five year struggle, Evelyn Forget, a professor of health sciences at the University of Manitoba, secured access to those boxes in 2009. Until the data is computerized, any systematic analysis is impossible. Undeterred, Forget has begun to piece together the story by using the census, health records, and the testimony of the program’s participants. What is now emerging reveals that the program could have counted many successes.

The government wanted to know what would happen if everybody in town received a guaranteed income, and specifically, they wanted to know whether people would still work.

It turns out they did.

Only two segments of Dauphin’s labour force worked less as a result of Mincome—new mothers and teenagers. Mothers with newborns stopped working because they wanted to stay at home longer with their babies. And teenagers worked less because they weren’t under as much pressure to support their families.

The end result was that they spent more time at school and more teenagers graduated. Those who continued to work were given more opportunities to choose what type of work they did.“ Vivian Belik – The Dominion

“When I was about 12 years old I was looking at a gear on a table. And I saw the cities of the future. I think all inventions are based on experiences like that; I don't think they come out of nowhere.”

#jacquefresco #thevenusproject #RBE

Please visit: www.thevenusproject.com﻿

“When I was about 12 years old I was looking at a gear on a table. And I saw the cities of the future. I think all inventions are based on experiences like that; I don't think they come out of nowhere.”

Poverty is the Worst Form of Violence Reinforced by Our Society – Peter Joseph (Video)http://karmajello.com/universe/knowledge/poverty-structural-violence-peter-joseph.htmlThere’s no reason to have these massive wealth gaps and poverty. Structural violence has killed more people than any dictator or war combined.#peterjoseph #resourcebasedeconomy #socialcommentary #awareness #corruption #monetarysystem #thezeitgeistmovement #thevenusproject #abbymartin ﻿

Poverty is the Worst Form of Violence Reinforced by Our Society – Peter Joseph (Video)http://karmajello.com/universe/knowledge/poverty-structural-violence-peter-joseph.htmlThere’s no reason to have these massive wealth gaps and poverty. Structural violence has killed more people than any dictator or war combined.#peterjoseph #resourcebasedeconomy #socialcommentary #awareness #corruption #monetarysystem #thezeitgeistmovement #thevenusproject #abbymartin ﻿___

All around the world, labour is losing out to capital. "The 'labour share' of national income has been falling across much of the world since the 1980s (see chart). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a club of mostly rich countries, reckons that labour captured just 62% of all income in the 2000s, down from over 66% in the early 1990s. That sort of decline is not supposed to happen. For decades economists treated the shares of income flowing to labour and capital as fixed (apart from short-run wiggles due to business cycles). When Nicholas Kaldor set out six 'stylised facts' about economic growth in 1957, the roughly constant share of income flowing to labour made the list. Many in the profession now wonder whether it still belongs there. A falling labour share implies that productivity gains no longer translate into broad rises in pay. Instead, an ever... more »

All around the world, labour is losing out to capital. "The 'labour share' of national income has been falling across much of the world since the 1980s (see chart). The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), a club of mostly rich countries, reckons that labour captured just 62% of all income in the 2000s, down from over 66% in the early 1990s. That sort of decline is not supposed to happen. For decades economists treated the shares of income flowing to labour and capital as fixed (apart from short-run wiggles due to business cycles). When Nicholas Kaldor set out six 'stylised facts' about economic growth in 1957, the roughly constant share of income flowing to labour made the list. Many in the profession now wonder whether it still belongs there. A falling labour share implies that productivity gains no longer translate into broad rises in pay. Instead, an ever larger share of the benefits of growth accrues to owners of capital."

"Trade cannot account for all labour’s woes in America or elsewhere. Workers in many developing countries, from China to Mexico, have also struggled to seize the benefits of growth over the past two decades. The likeliest culprit is technology, which, the OECD estimates, accounts for roughly 80% of the drop in the labour share among its members. Foxconn, for example, is looking for something different in its new employees: circuitry. The firm says it will add 1m robots to its factories next year."﻿___

We are living in the future, says Max Golden. On the upside, no more slavery -- he doesn't quite come out and say robots will do everything, but that's the drift. On the downside, no job security -- lots of jobs becoming instantly obsolete. Everyone has to maintain tech skills.

This guy seems like a writer, not a techie, so maybe the idea is starting to propagate out into society.﻿

We are living in the future, says Max Golden. On the upside, no more slavery -- he doesn't quite come out and say robots will do everything, but that's the drift. On the downside, no job security -- lots of jobs becoming instantly obsolete. Everyone has to maintain tech skills.

This guy seems like a writer, not a techie, so maybe the idea is starting to propagate out into society.﻿___

Advanced-concept Robots | European Space AgencyESA is looking to the future of space exploration using robots ranging from small humanoid robots to larger construction robots with varying degrees of autonomy and flexibility.

This animation shows advanced concepts of robots designed to explore, prepare and help humans in the very harsh conditions found on the Moon and beyond. For many of the concepts shown, ESA has already developed real-life prototypes, including the multifunctional wheels seen on the first robot in this video.

The pursuit of artificial intelligence has long interested computer scientists. As early as the 1950s, "machine intelligence" was a favourite topic for those who wanted to put the war behind them and look to a science-led future. But will machines ever think for themselves? http://bbc.in/1fJ9PvN﻿

The pursuit of artificial intelligence has long interested computer scientists. As early as the 1950s, "machine intelligence" was a favourite topic for those who wanted to put the war behind them and look to a science-led future. But will machines ever think for themselves? http://bbc.in/1fJ9PvN﻿___

A start-up company called Alion Energy is betting it can automate the installation and maintenance of large-scale solar farms using robots.

"Working in near secrecy until recently, the company, based in Richmond, Calif., is ready to use its machines in three projects in the next few months in California, Saudi Arabia and China. If all goes well, executives expect that they can help bring the price of solar electricity into line with that of natural gas by cutting the cost of building and maintaining large solar installations."

"Eliminating the physical plant costs is a major area of focus through eliminating materials and eliminating labor."﻿___Revolutionary...